'Saw' certainly isn't for the squeamish

News-Times, The (Danbury, CT)

Published
7:00 pm EST, Monday, February 14, 2005

Two guys wake up on opposite ends of a filthy bathroom. Thick chains around their ankles keep them tethered to the wall. A dead guy with his brains blown out lies between them, as does a pistol. Soon, they find a saw.

A psycho serial killer placed them there. The saw won't cut the chain, but the psycho is nice enough to give them a choice.

Cut off your foot to live or stay there and die - slowly.

Was watching "Silence of the Lambs" like playing with kittens? Was "Seven" just too darn sugary? Did you feel like there just wasn't enough bodily fluids in "The Texas Chainsaw Massacre" remake?

Then "Saw" is all yours, baby.

"Saw," which came out on DVD Feb. 15, is a nasty little thriller. It is the first film from young director James Wan, who wrote the screenplay with Leigh Whannell.

The movie plays like Wan and Whannell really, really wanted Hollywood producers to like them. It's as if they made the movie with the hopes of landing a multi-picture deal. Everything in the movie feels familiar and everything is over-the-top.

The two guys - let's call them "White Guy No. 1" and "guy from The Princess

Bride" (Cary Elwes) - were put in the smelly basement by the Jigsaw Killer. He's not your traditional serial killer.

No way man, the Jigsaw Killer is a psycho for the "Xtreme" sports crowd. He captures his victims and then puts them through these horrifying scenarios. It's Rube Goldberg gone wild.

One guy has to crawl through razor wire. Another victim has to locate a key by digging through the stomach of some dude. Mmmm, intestines!

Danny Glover, meanwhile, plays cop obsessed with catching the serial killer. He runs around like a mad dog and bleeds a lot. It's a long way from "The Color Purple."

It's all very gross and it's all very disturbing. Not that I'm a guy who doesn't like gross and disturbing movies. Heck, I'll sit through "Dead Alive" any day. In high school, I was the proud owner of a "Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer" T-shirt.

But "Saw" lacks originality. It makes you squirm just to make you squirm. It's about as entertaining as watching those hip replacement surgeries on those exploitation flicks that pass themselves off as "medical" shows on basic cable.

It's as if the filmmakers grabbed the ingredients from just about every serial killer thriller of the last 10 years, put them in a blender, drank it down, then vomited in on screen to produce "Saw."

Then again, it made more than $55 million and "Saw 2" is on the way. So what do I know?